Meditation of His Beatitude Patriarch Pizzaballa: Most Holy Trinity, Year A
Below you can find the Meditation of His Beatitude Patriarch Pierbattista Pizzaballa, Latin Patriarch of Jerusalem, for the Most Holy Trinity, Year A, Sunday 4 June 2023.
Jn 3:16-18
In some passages of the Gospel of John, we find words of Jesus that are like summaries, keys to reading, and understanding all the actions of God.
The passage we hear on this Feast of the Most Trinity (Jn 3:16-18), which is part of the dialogue between Jesus and Nicodemus, is just one of these fundamental passages.
As I said, it is not the only one, there are others.
Let us think about Chapter 6: 39-40, where Jesus says that “…this is the will of him who sent me, that I should lose nothing of all that he has given me, but raise it up on the last day. For this is the will of my Father, that everyone who looks on the Son and believes in him should have eternal life, and I will raise him up on the last day.” Or about Chapter 12:47, when Jesus repeats the same words that we hear today, as to repeat the essential: He did not come to condemn, but to salve.
Here, in these passages, Jesus gives a “theological” lesson about life, salvation, the work of God the Father. And it is chiefly a different lesson from what “religious” men would expect.
Why?
Because the common thought of “religious” man is that according to which man errs and God punishes. Or, on the contrary, man behaves correctly and God rewards.
Instead, God not only does not condemn but neither does He judge. By coming into the world and making Himself man, God submits Himself, in some way, to man’s judgment, his rejection, his condemnation.
But even in the face of all this, the evil of man, God does not judge, because it is man himself who, in doing so, excludes himself, judges himself, reveals his own sin. The coming of Jesus in the flesh makes man’s sin evident, his disobedience.
Faced with this evidence, God can finally do what He wants, what He came for, namely, to save: to reach the place where man has lost himself and there to reveal His love…
This Meditation was originally published on the website of the Latin Patriarchate of Jerusalem. Please click here to read the full text.